


Responses to: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

by Gracierocket



Series: the misguided harry potter re-read of doom [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-04-20 22:23:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 4,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4804400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gracierocket/pseuds/Gracierocket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>In which JK's structure is boss.</p>
          </blockquote>





	1. The Boy Who Lived

There is a find balance to be struck between contrition and belligerence. Some people never find it. Tuney Dursley did. She brought the baby inside, and found in his fragility an exact counterpoint to the bubbling fury that rose in her as she saw Dumbledore's letter. Its contents, too, exerted a balancing influence. Her sister was dead. The laughing child on the swing was gone, but even in her death there was something glamorous, something inaccessible. Lily's manner of dying was so alien, so fantastical, as to give it an unreal quality. The baby slept peacefully, and even that was oddly annoying. She saw in Lily's calm child a criticism of her own parenting, of her son, who had never slept a night through yet.

When she finally woke Vernon, Tuney noticed that he looked to her, not to the child. A glance was enough. He understood where she was placing the line. The child would be kept, but it must not be loved.

She watched her husband's hands tighten on the edge of the table, and then he moved abruptly.

"You'll have to find somewhere else to store the hoover," he said.


	2. The Vanishing Glass

Dudley, though not a fast learner, was a thorough one. From his father he learned the relatively easy lesson of indifference, but from his mother he learned the much more subtle one of prejudice. That hatred is the best possible defence for fear, or jealousy. He learned to hate as a defence mechanism without ever understanding what he was defending himself against.


	3. The Letters From No-One

Albus Dumbledore, accomplished Occlumens, was particularly good at protecting himself from his own thoughts. As a result, he barely thought about Harry Potter in the decade between dropping the baby onto his relatives' doorstep and instructing Hagrid to ensure the Dursleys were suitably afraid by the time he arrived to collect the boy. Albus had seen that Harry must remain with the Dursleys, so, after casting charms to ensure that Social Services would never be called, he allowed himself to direct his attention elsewhere. This is, of course, a necessary skill for practical people with big plans. 

Nonetheless, things might, perhaps, have been different if he had permitted himself to remember. Mrs Figg might, for example, have been instructed to be kind. An apple tree in the garden might have been bewitched to provide nutritious and varied fruit for Harry Potter alone. A kind, if eccentric, school librarian might have provided him with a sanctuary and the respite of books.

Much later, Albus consoled himself with the knowledge that Harry had grown up kind and generous - a triumph of nature over nurture. But such consolation, in a clever man, is always hollow. 'Out of mind' crashes in with all the weight of the forgotten years when it is no longer out of sight.


	4. The Keeper of the Keys

Hagrid glanced over his shoulder at the door to his hut. It remained protectively closed. As an afterthought, he bustled over to the windows and pulled the curtains closed, then returned to his work station where the cake ingredients waited ready. He assembled them in a bowl the size of his head, then surreptitiously pointed his pink umbrella at the mixture. It whipped into life, creaming together joyfully, spattering pre-cake all over the walls. Hagrid siphoned the worst of it back into the bowl while Fang made a start on the floor. Then he put it in the oven.

He hadn't known what to get for Harry, the boy he loved but did not know. But then, everyone liked cake, didn't they?


	5. Diagon Alley

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which JK's structure is boss.

No fic for this chapter, just a note on Rowling's awesome structure. There's a certain amount of mirroring in the journey Harry takes on his journey into the wizarding world, and the order in which Voldemort's horcruxes are destroyed.

First Dumbledore finds the shack - Voldemort's family home - and Slytherin's ring.

_First Harry is found in his family home - equally horrible in its own way._

Next Dumbledore takes Harry to the cave in the water to find Slytherin's locket, travelling on a boat powered by magic to the island in the centre of the lake.

_...and Harry finds himself in the deserted shack in the middle of the lake. He's taken away from the island on a boat powered by magic._

Next Harry, Ron and Hermione break into Gringotts to steal Hufflepuff's cup.

_...and Hagrid takes Harry to Gringotts for the first time. "Ye'd have to be mad ter break into Gringotts."_

Then Harry and his friends find they must return to Hogwarts for Ravenclaw's diadem.

_...and Harry reaches Hogwarts for the first time._


	6. The Journey From Platform Nine and Three Quarters

Peter Pettigrew was not, in the ordinary sense, a coward. He always stood up for his friends in fights, never ran away or backed down first. Oh, he was tribal, of course - happier in the middle ranks than on the front line - but in the normal tests that a human can expect to sit in a normal life, he passed.

So it should come as no particular surprise that when Ron stood up to fight, Peter Pettigrew attacked first, plunging his teeth into Goyle's outstretched fingers.


	7. The Sorting Hat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'Hope to see you in Hufflepuff!' said the Friar. 'My old house, you know.'

The Fat Friar was frightened of almost everything. He was frightened that someone would discover his magic, he was frightened that no-one ever would and he'd be stuck casting spells in the dark forever. He was frightened that the Bible made no mention of magic, frightened that maybe, possibly, rumours of the existence of God had been... exaggerated. He was frightened when he read of miracles and knew that he could perform them all, even those of Christ Himself.

He had fed his congregation 'miracle' wine once. He had sat in the vestry, sweating with the fear of discovery, transfiguring water into Communion Wine. He hoped it was holy. It was done with love, even devotion, but he was honest enough to recognise that there was also plenty of curiosity in his actions. It had taken him weeks to get the flavour exactly right.

In the end, it was the healing that did for him. His tiny village was unusually healthy, but the doctor was out of work. Whenever anyone was ill they went straight to the Friar. He would ask them to close their eyes while they prayed together, and then surreptitiously remove his wand from his robes.

The Bishop, when he visited, was not inclined to keep his eyes closed while he prayed for the removal of his kidney stones, and the Friar had never heard of the Obliviate spell.

The village rose up in his defence, outraged at the persecution of so holy a man, and the Friar could see a vindictive pleasure in the Bishop's eyes at their resistance.

The Bishop called in the army and set up camp in the church to await the locals' pitiful attempt at a rescue of their beloved Friar.

The Friar sighed in his vestry, now his prison. Then he took the roses his parishioner had given him the week before as a thank you for curing her cataract, and transfigured them into arsenic.

For the first time, he found he wasn't afraid. His duty was clear: one last act of kindness for the community he loved and served.

But he wasn't ready, either. Having learned to live without fear at the moment of death, to have learned to fear not even God, or the absence of God, at the moment of death, seemed too unfair. So he cast one final spell, a spell he felt was probably a blasphemy. He found a way to stay.


	8. The Potions Master

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before he was old he was young.

Lily and Severus sat together in their first ever potions lesson. Or rather, Lily forced Mary to move up to make room for him, beckoning him over so enthusiastically that he couldn't refuse. Beneath his curtained hair, Severus flushed with pleasure at such a public display of affection.

Professor Slughorn spoke, and the two of them listened with rapt attention, went to the cupboard for equipment, and then both spent the lesson making perfect versions of the Draft of Living Death.

"Well, well," said Slughorn. "Two complete potions in the first class. Do you know, I think this is a new record. Ten points each to Griffindor and Slytherin." Slughorn looked keenly at this unlikely duo for a moment: the girl, confident, pretty and with that neatness only available to children beloved by their parents. The boy, barely able to make eye contact even to receive instructions, let alone praise, srawny and, well, dull. Horace Slughorn, despite his many excellent qualities, was not a kind man, and he was certainly not at all prone to charity. In that moment, he dismissed the boy, brilliant in spite of his disadvantages, and focused instead on the girl, brilliant in addition to all her other clear advantages.

Unaware yet of any differences between them, potions quickly became Lily and Severus' favourite class. Their textbooks were full of annotations as they used their complementary but different instincts to amend the instructions. Lily's adaptations usually took the form of added ingredients, Severus' were about method. Some incomprehensible pages in each textbook showed only one half of a conversation, the other half being in the other's book as they each scrawled secrets in their own margins.

Lily, peering over at Sev's book to see an amendment he had made ("add anticlockwise turn #7", read the spiderly scrawl), noticed a word she didn't recognise there in the margin. "Sectumsempra". Lily underlined it, wrote "?!" in her own book.

"For enemies," wrote Severus underneath the word.

"Your own?"

Severus nodded grimly.

Lily felt a slight fluttering in her stomach, the sensation she always got when her best friend did something that made him separate from her somehow. She reached out and gently touched Sev's arm. He smiled slightly, then bent low over his cauldron.


	9. The Midnight Duel

Argus Filch was born and raised in Hogsmeade. He grew up in the shadow of the great castle, endlessly discussing which house he would be in with the other children. Argus thought he'd probably be a Hufflepuff. He mostly liked to spend time with his friends, he liked to cook and garden. For his tenth birthday his mother bought him his school trunk. She had lined it with yellow and black.

No-one mentioned the word 'squib' to Argus. They said things like 'late developer' and 'slow starter', and they meant it. Hogsmeade was mostly populated by the older wizarding families, and non-magical wizards were rare in any case.

Which meant that despite the fact that he had never shown any evidence of magic at all, everyone genuinely believed it had been a mistake when Argus' letter failed to arrive.

In the end, Professor Dumbledore himself came down to talk to him. He brought with him prospectuses of some excellent muggle schools, several of which were housed in castles. When Argus would not be consoled, his mother took him to meet friends of friends, distant relatives who lived in the muggle world. An accountant, an actor, a solicitor. She bought him a torch and a television, braving the bemused smiles of the shop keepers as she counted out the strange coins.

But it was no use. After three abortive attempts to send Argus to a muggle school, his mother instead did her best to educate him at home.

When he was 18, and rather against Dumbledore's better judgement, Argus got a job at the school. At least he was in the building, he said to himself. At least he was entitled to walk the corridors and sleep beneath its roof and eat in the great hall. It wasn't much, but it was better than being an accountant.


	10. Hallowe'en

It's quite interesting, I think, that what Hermione had to do to win Ron and Harry's friendship was to be uncharacteristically useless and get rescued from a troll. Ron actually uses a spell Hermione is ace at to do the rescuing.

Rowling mentioned in an interview once that she thought Ron and Hermione would have got together a lot quicker if Hermione had been willing to compromise and be less strong, less brilliant.

Hermione spends the rest of the books being brave and resourceful and, obviously, talented. But at this threshold moment she has to be the damsel in distress.


	11. Quidditch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Yes, yes, that's right," said Professor Flitwick, beaming at Harry. "Professor McGonnagall told me all about the special circumstances, Potter."

"Please," said Professor McGonnagall.

Albus Dumbledore looked at his colleague over his half moon spectacles.

"My dear Minerva," he said, "'Because I want Griffindor to win the cup' does not constitute 'special circumstances' to buy a student a professional grade broom."

Minerva stiffened and looked away.

"Well then, if you insist, I am happy to fabricate some reasons."

"That's not quite what I..."

"The boy is stared at everywhere he goes for something he doesn't even remember. Let's give them a reason to stare that he can take ownership of. He is without family, he has no support network to speak of. This will give him unquestioned membership of the wizarding world, and a team of older students who will take an interest in him." She paused. "And Severus has had the house cup on his shelf for six years now."

"Minerva..."

"He brings it out and polishes it sometimes. Did you know that? In the staff room."

Dumbledore looked at Minerva for a moment, then allowed himself a small smile.

"Very well," he said. "'Special circumstances.'"


	12. The Mirror of Erised

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The happiest man on Earth would be able to use the Mirror of Erised like a normal mirror, that is, he would look into it and see himself exactly as he is."

It was the year of Lily Ginerva Potter's graduation from Hogwarts and, as usual, the families had been invited in to witness the ceremony.

Since the families consisted almost entirely of ex-students, they were allowed licence to reminiscently wander the corridors before the ceremony. In his own ramblings Harry had twice entered apparently deserted classrooms to find a blushing middle aged couple reliving their first encounter.

As Harry backed apologetically out of the second classroom-boudoir, a dog patronus came shooting through a nearby window and stopped directly in front of him. In Ron's voice, it spoke:

"Mate, look out of this window right now!"

Harry rushed to the window just in time to see his eldest son shooting up into the air almost vertically on a broom, chasing a small blur. As Harry squinted into the sun he saw with a jolt that the blur was his grandson, James' first child, on a broom that should certainly have been bewitched to stay near the ground.

As he watched, James performed a neat sideways roll and grabbed the laughing infant in his protective arms. Harry laughed with relief as he watched the two of them circle gently back to the ground and into the midst of his family. His wife, his son, his daughter in law, his second son, with Albus' First Serious Boyfriend holding his hand shyly behind his back, and his youngest child, his Lily, standing tall and delighted in her graduation robes.

His nostalgia tour complete, Harry made his way back towards the entrance hall, going by a long-familiar short cut.

He was close enough to hear the babble of voices on the grounds outside when a glint of silver caught his eye in a room beside him. He pushed open the door and found himself staring at his own face. A mirror.

Harry straightened his collar, made a half-hearted attempt at flattening his hair, and walked back towards his family. He didn't even notice the clawed feet of the mirror, or the strange writing around the frame.


	13. Nicholas Flamel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Snape's refereeing this time, and he'll be looking for any excuse to knock points off Griffindor!"

"...unbelievable!", finished Minerva.

Albus waited a moment until he was sure that McGonnagall had stopped shouting, and spoke.

"I have, as you know, grave suspicions about Professor Quirrell. I cannot voice my concerns just yet for fear of putting him at great risk, so..."

"SO you need the best defence against the dark arts practitioner on the scene, yes. But why refereeing the match? From the commentator's box he would have a clear view of all the stands as well as the pitch, and he wouldn't be distracted by looking for opportunities to unfairly punish my team."

Albus looked shifty.

"Minerva..."

She rounded on him, eyes flashing.

"This is because you let me play Potter, isn't it? This is what Severus asked for to even the score."

"I have to be impartial, Minerva."

"Well, let's hope Severus feels bound by the same scruples," said Minerva as she swept furiously out of the room.


	14. Norbert the Norwegian Ridgeback

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Our lot have to keep putting spells on Muggles who've spotted them, to make them forget."

Eleri looked down at the picnic once more. Artichoke hearts, fresh bread, humous, strawberries and chocolate cake. And champagne, of course. Was it too much? Maybe it was too much. He wasn't expecting a date, after all, she'd just said they could have sandwiches and go bird watching. Maybe she ought to hide the champagne? It was a bit forward of her to bring it, really.

Eleri looked frantically around for a suitable hiding place, but at that moment, Steffen appeared over the brow of the hill. She stood up, managing to not knock over anything.

"Am I late?" said Steffan. "I thought... wow!" Steffan approached and examined the picnic.

Eleri found herself going scarlet and bent her head to hide her embarrassment. She had put the artichokes in a special bowl so they would float. It was clear to her now that she was certifiably insane and that Steffan certainly only thought of her as a friend and that people who put artichokes in special bowls are destined to lives of unbroken solitude.

"This is amazing!" said Steffan. "I love your artichoke arrangement. So many people don't bother."

Eleri looked up, her eyes shining with pleasure and gratitude.

"I thought..."

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. Eleri took a step towards him. And another. It seemed like time had practically stopped as she took one final step and placed his hand in hers. He bent down and kissed her and suddenly Eleri was very grateful for the slow passing of time. The kiss had a lot of time to make up for, being as it was the product of ten years' worth of longing and staring across offices at each other.

After about two decades, they broke apart, beaming.

"I wasn't sure if you..." he said.

"Me neither," she replied. "I always..." Eleri stopped, and stood staring behind Steffan's head. He turned too, just in time to see a real, twenty foot long dragon rearing up in the distance. It flapped its wings madly, and then swooped towards them, soaring over their heads and away into the distance.

Neither of them spoke. They just stood there, staring in the direction the dragon had disappeared off to. Eventually, Steffan put his hand into Eleri's.

"Wow," was all he said.

An hour or so later, an hour so perfect it almost wiped the dragon from their minds, Eleri and Steffan were again interrupted, this time by a couple of men dressed rather eccentrically - one in spats and plus fours, the other wearing a shining Medieval breast plate and what looked like swimming trunks.

"Hello, there", said Spats. "Did you see anything odd about an hour ago?"

Delighted to have confirmation that they hadn't been hallucinating, Eleri and Steffan told the strangers all about the dragon. They were surprised to note that the strangers both nodded grimly, without delight. Then they both pulled sticks out of their clothes, and pointed them...

*****

The next day, Eleri woke up feeling a bit groggy, like she had a mild hangover, but she wandered vaguely into work anyway. Steffan was there, of course, drinking his second coffee of the day, and Eleri smiled at him but he didn't see. Not one of the exciting days, then.

Maybe she ought to be brave, she thought to herself. She could just do it, just go up to him and ask him on a date. A picnic. They could go birdwatching. But even as the enchanting fantasy played across her imagination, she knew she would never pluck up the courage to do it.


	15. The Forbidden Forest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "If my father knew I was doing this..."

Malfoy Manor

Tuesday 15th May 1991

My dear Madam,

I am writing to complain in the strongest possible terms about the punishment which my son, Draco Malfoy, underwent after he was caught out of bed after hours.

He informs me he was forced into the Forbidden Forest at night by a half-giant, and instructed to search for the mutilated body of a dead unicorn in order to ascertain what was responsible for the death.

I can only presume that the purpose of this extraordinary 'punishment' was to ensure my son was so terrified of the dark that he would never step out of line at night again. If this is the case, please allow me to congratulate you on the efficacy of your technique. Draco is indeed too afraid to step out after curfew. Indeed, I have had to send him an ever-glowing lantern so that he can keep it lit by his bed at night, so terrified is he of the dark, of centaurs, of a strange slithering creature that walks the forest at night.

My son is an eleven year old boy. Perhaps the next time he is guilty of a minor misdemeanour, you might consider an alternative punishment, such as writing lines, rather than searching your imagination for ways of terrorising the children under your care.

Yours &c.,

Narcissa Malfoy


	16. Through the Trapdoor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neville and the C story

No fic for this one, but a comment on JK's structure, again.

I recently learned what a C story is (thanks, slavetohiscat!). It's pretty simple. Your A story is your main plot, your B story is your sub plot, and your C story is your little extra plot, told in just a few beats. But it still has a beginning, middle and end, and it still has to be narratively satisfying. Often, it serves as a way of reflecting on the main story, using the same themes in a different way. Or sometimes it serves as light relief. In a really good structure, it will often dovetail back into the A story at the end.

And in this book, the C story, I think, is Neville's Journey into Courage. It's super simple: he starts as a buffoon, frightened of everyone and instantly singled out by Malfoy as the ideal bullying target. With Ron's encouragement, he stands up to them, but in a very embarrassing way (telling Goyle he's worth "twelve of you"). Then the friends who he so aspires to be like betray him (not intentionally, but he thinks they've not let him in on the secret about the 'pretend' dragon) so that his next major act of courage gets him heinously, disproportionately punished for it (he loses 50 points for Griffindor for warning the others about Malfoy). But that just paves the way, really, for his final act of courage: standing up to his friends, those people who taught him to be brave, and who got him into trouble for trying to follow them rather than going his own, truer way, following his own moral compass.

It's a lesson Harry, the natural leader, never had to learn. But Neville figures it out before his 12th birthday, which is still pretty good going.


	17. The Man With Two Faces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I see myself shaking hands with Dumbledore," he invented. "I-I've won the House Cup for Griffindor."

Why doesn't Harry tell the truth at this moment? Not the in-the-moment truth, but the heart's-desire truth. Why doesn't he describe his family standing behind him, loving and proud? You might expect that it would be the first thing to pop into his head, what he saw the last time he looked into that mirror. But instead he doesn't offer up his own heart's desire, but an invented one.

I think there are two interesting options here: perhaps he gives the desire he imagines would be his if Voldemort had never entered his life - almost an act of defiance to think of a world where the man who refuses to die has never been born, where Harry's dearest wish is something so normal. Alternatively, you could believe that the fantasy he offers up is Ron's. What separates Harry from Voldemort is love, and Harry carries his best friend in his heart. The lie is a kind of patronus - something of Ron stepping between Harry and the danger at the moment he needs it.


End file.
